General knowledge · Economics & society

The tragedy of the commons

Named by Garrett Hardin in Science, 1968

Economics — common-pool resources and collective action

The argument that a resource open to all will be destroyed by all: each user who takes one more unit gets the whole of the benefit but bears only a fraction of the cost, so everyone has reason to keep taking until nothing is left. Garrett Hardin gave it its name in Science in 1968, borrowing the pasture illustration from an 1833 pamphlet by the Oxford economist William Forster Lloyd. It has since been applied to fisheries, aquifers, antibiotics and the atmosphere. Elinor Ostrom's field research, which won her the economics prize in 2009, showed that communities frequently do govern shared resources successfully — so the destructive outcome is a possibility, not a law.

How to spot them

▸Herders adding one more animal to a shared pasture, each gaining all the benefit and bearing a share of the cost
▸A 1968 article in Science that took its pasture from an 1833 Oxford pamphlet
▸Hardin's own prescription: 'mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon'
▸Elinor Ostrom's design principles, and the first woman to win the economics prize

Key facts

An article in Science on 13 December 1968 that gave the idea its enduring name (1968)

Garrett Hardin's essay, which was as much about population as about pasture

William Forster Lloyd's 1833 Oxford lectures on the checks to population, the source of the grazing example (1833)

Two Lectures on the Checks to Population; Hardin acknowledged the debt

Each herder gains the whole benefit of an extra beast but bears only a share of the cost of overgrazing

The arithmetic that drives the argument — a divergence between private and social cost

'Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon' — the author's own proposed remedy (1968)

Not privatisation but collectively agreed restraint, enforced

Elinor Ostrom's 1990 book showing communities govern shared resources by their own rules (1990)

Governing the Commons; she became the first woman to receive the economics prize, in 2009

Michael Heller's 1998 mirror image, in which too many owners with veto rights leave a resource underused (1998)

The tragedy of the anticommons

The atmosphere as the largest example of all, with each country's emissions costing everyone else

The structure of the climate problem, and why it is so hard to solve by agreement

Key ideas

The crucial distinction is between open access and a managed commons. Historical English commons were regulated by custom, stint and manorial court, so the metaphor libels the institution it is named after — a point made by the historian Susan Jane Buck Cox among others.
Hardin offered two remedies, privatisation or regulation. Ostrom identified a third: self-governance by the users themselves, with clear boundaries, rules matched to local conditions, graduated sanctions, cheap conflict resolution and the right to organise recognised by outside authorities.
The structure is the same as the free-rider problem and closely related to the prisoner's dilemma repeated among many players.
Hardin's own politics sit uneasily with the idea's respectability. His later writings on 'lifeboat ethics' and immigration were explicitly nativist, and his essay's argument about population and coerced reproduction is disowned by many who use the phrase.

Quick-fire facts

•Garrett Hardin's essay appeared in Science on 13 December 1968
•The grazing illustration comes from William Forster Lloyd's Two Lectures on the Checks to Population, published in Oxford in 1833
•Hardin's own prescription was 'mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected'
•Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons was published in 1990
•Ostrom shared the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Oliver Williamson, becoming the first woman to receive it; she was a political scientist by training
•Ostrom set out eight design principles for durable common-pool resource institutions
•Michael Heller coined 'the tragedy of the anticommons' in 1998 for resources underused because too many parties can block their use
•Standard applications include fisheries, groundwater, grazing, traffic congestion, antibiotic resistance and greenhouse gas emissions
•Hardin, who died in 2003, wrote approvingly of restricting immigration in essays on 'lifeboat ethics'; the Southern Poverty Law Center listed him as a white nationalist

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Sources

Garrett Hardin — The Tragedy of the Commons Science, vol. 162, 13 December 1968. Cited without URL.
Elinor Ostrom — Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action 1990